The modern job market is no simple place to navigate through, especially for working adults that became accustomed to career management and counseling prior to the present digital age.  The role of technology has greatly affected how and why we need to seek career coaching and counseling, and of course the basic necessity which the vast majority (if not all) working adults have for career coaching continues to be a major phenomenon, despite whether or not we are talking about the modern day and age or at any point in the past.  Yet what exactly is career coaching?  And how has career coaching been affected by recent changes in technology and events as well as trends in the global marketplace?  Let's tackle each of these issues on their own first, to then get a good idea of how working professionals should tackle the issue of career coaching in the 21^st century.

Career coaching can be a tricky to describe to people that have never experienced it before (well, and make them understand that is).  The role of the career coach is neither specifically that of the so-called counselors at high school and college career offices, nor is it the role of somebody that simply finds you a job somewhere as an employee at a temping agency would do.  A career coach is someone that helps a working professional find the opportunities that they need to advance in life, and more importantly helps them determine exactly what it is that they want to pursue in the first place.  It's a tricky role that requires the fine touch of trained professionals that study hard to do what they do well, and it is by no means the role of a friend with a little wisdom to share—that's part of it, but by no means all. 

To make it simpler, a career coach does what any kind of coach does: they tell players—or professionals in this case—how to improve their techniques, and help channel them in directions that will ultimately be to their benefit.  Through a mixture of studies in psychology and a vast wealth of information concerning job opportunities, databases,  resources, and so on and so forth, think of the career coach as a mentor or guide along the path to career success.

As the times change, so too do the ways in which working professionals find opportunities for growth, as do those opportunities in and of themselves (as the US economy, for example, has shifted towards a service-based model, opportunities are increasingly in this field and decreasingly in the manufacturing field). Fundamentally, there is a need to understand how technology in general, and advanced communications in particular, have affected the hunt for the perfect career path development, and on the other hand there is a need to perceive what the overarching career path trends are in our present global context.

With regards to the former issue, career coaching has been rendered much more dynamic thanks to the wealth of information exchange over the internet. Both career coaches themselves and the professionals themselves seeking to recast their career choice or simply resituate themselves within an already present career field have a tremendous spectrum of resources to take advantage of in the quest at hand. These days, with the boom of social networking sites and services online, a whole new window has been opened up; and whereas many people may discard these sites as serving only for juvenile purposes, the reality is that social networking (both online and off, of course) is hugely beneficial to the process of career development, career change, or whatever the case may be for a given professional at a given point in their trajectory.

However, the reality is that many things stay the same within the field of career coaching despite the advance of technology. The simple fact of the matter is that somebody seeking career coaching services needs to manifest certain qualities, and in turn so does the career coach him or herself. A working adult needs to be willing to accept the advice of another (and not just anybody, but somebody specializing in helping other advance in their careers as well as lives), and furthermore needs to be willing to take a step back from their predicament and accept the lessons of their mistakes as well as their successes. Conversely, a career coach needs to always have first and foremost a strong sense of interpersonal communication with a firm grasp of human psychology and particularly workplace psychology, coupled with an enormous networking ability and knowledge of pertinent resources in the fields of job searching, personal betterment, etc.

To get into slightly greater detail as to a career coaches role in today's modern marketplace, there are specific functions which need to be met in order for it to be worth a person's while to hire a career coach for their services. One major aspect of career coaching (though by no means the only or the most important on its own) is being able to refine a person's resume and CV—which, if you weren't aware, are not the same thing, and each is destined for a different purpose. For those that have failed to bring themselves up to speed with the times, these days it's important to highlight mastery of software and/or hardware (depending on the person's career field) in these documents, as a way of proving that the individual in question fits into the present marketplace context properly. Furthermore, a career coach needs to help working professionals think about which of their strengths—whether in terms of a manufacturable good or a service to be lent—will be marketable in the medium and long term, and based on that what intelligent and sensible long term goals the person should be setting for themselves.

Ultimately, career coaching these days implies helping people at various stages of their career, from beginning to end, adapt to the continuing evolution of globalization and chase a dream within that reality.  Hence, the frequent overlap between career coaches and life coaches makes a good bit of sense, a testament to a broader and more inclusive outlook on life that many people are starting to adopt as their own.